PUBLIC DEMAND DRIVES DRUG INDUSTRY

Re: "What of the pain drug dealers cause?"

(Letter-writer) Richard Oldenborger seems to be under the impression
that drug dealers are deliberately trying to find customers, drum up
business, and cause bad things to happen. The truth of the matter is,
it is the public who drives the industry.

The dealers are the result of the ever-growing and ever-more-exotic
demands of a drug-hungry public. Dealers merely fill the demand, they
don't create it.

The dangers in the drug trade (poor product, no regulation, gun
violence) is a direct result of our society's psychotic desire to stop
certain people from choosing how they would prefer to alter their senses.

Drugs aren't the problem, nor are dealers. The law is the thing that
is wrong.

The dealers are no more to blame than a bartender, the guy who sells
fatty junk foods to our kids, or the guy who sells gas at the station.

The blame falls squarely on the shoulders of the media-addled public
who keep voting for prohibitionist hacks who insist that only more
prohibition will save us from the problems caused by
prohibition.

Russell Barth

Patients Against Ignorance and Discrimination on Cannabis